Our Avengers - Why The Fast and Furious is a Superhero Series for Everybody

"No. We don't need spandex. Our shirts are tight enough."

Last week I gave Furious 6 a bit of a hard time. Mostly because of the concentrated ridiculousness on display and the hammy writing, but that's to be expected from a Fast and Furious film. I still mostly thought it was an entertaining experience, and I have amended the review to reflect that.

I also mentioned that Furious 6, with its assemblage of heroes, is pretty much the multicultural equivalent of Marvel's Avengers. Indeed, as several reviewers have noted, The Fast and Furious is essentially a superhero series. And as silly and over the top as it is, I am glad we have it.

Hard as it is to believe, The Fast and the Furious franchise is the most important superhero franchise of the summer because its success can show Hollywood that audiences, both foreign and domestic, are far more colorblind and diverse than the studios care to admit.

In its decade plus existence, The Fast and Furious series has elevated the presence of people of color (POC) in franchise flicks by simply presenting "heroes" on screen who are not uniformly white males between 18 and 50. Granted, Paul Walker's Brian O'Connor was the audience surrogate and point of entry for the earliest entries, he is, by no means, the focal point of the series. Instead, Vin Diesel's ambiguously brown Dominic Toretto is unarguably the series anchor and one of its main draw. With 2 Fast 2 Furious, the series added an African-American lead in Tyrese's Roman and gadget man Tej (Ludacris). The third entry, Tokyo Drift, brought Asian character Han (Sung Kang) into the fold. Fast and Furious may have refocused on Dom and Brian, but it also added Hispanic characters played by Don Omar and Tego Calderon as well as reminding audiences about Michelle Rodriguez's Letty, one of the few Hispanic characters to remain present in some shape or form since the 2001 original. That's not even counting Eva Mendes' Monica from 2 Fast 2 Furious and Gal Gadot's vaguely Middle Eastern Gisele. Fast five brought most of these characters back together and added another major non-white character in Dwayne Johnson's Lucas Hobbs, and to a lesser extent Elsa Pataky's Brazilian cop, Elena. Now Furious 6 brings most of these characters back together, just as Fast Five did, in way that is not dissimilar to Marvel's Avengers with the main difference being that 90% of the team is non-white--the series' inclusion of women is not exceptional but it's a far cry above the average for big budget blockbusters, which makes the series significantly progressive by Hollywood's unremarkable standard. 

Truthfully, just getting one or two substantial roles for POC in a tentpole is a victory. Seven to nine substantial roles for POC in an multi-million dollar franchise is some kind of miracle. And what's particularly reaffirming about the characters of the fast and furious franchise is that, while they may have started as "criminals", they have evolved into full blown outlaw heroes, with a reasonable, mind you not Marvel level, cultural cache. That's important because non-white moviegoers can leave the theater after seeing a Fast and Furious movie as energized as they may have been after seeing Avengers but with the added bonus of seeing people who look like them and not having to think about what a Hispanic Thor, Asian Tony Stark, and Black Captain America might look like.

For all the strides the series has made in promoting diverse characters, it has also expanded its scope under Justin Lin's direction in a way that allows it to rival blockbusters like Avengers. Since the first entry, the series has gradually increased its scale, coming from a local story of LA drag racers to the misadventures of globe-trotting super Robin Hoods. The scope is so oversized that most recent entry offers as much destruction as the Avengers and Dark Knight Rises. The expanded scope has been and boon and a curse. In some ways, the increased scope has improved the focus of the later entries, giving each a unique genre flavor. On the other hand, the movies have become increasingly divorced from logic and reality as they embrace audacious, ridiculous stunts and set pieces. That may make the movies a bit of an affront to high-minded cineastes, but these movies were never designed to be insightful examinations of the human condition, and neither, despite our rose-colored instant nostalgia, was the Avengers. Movies like the entries in the Fast and Furious series are primed to make audiences pump their fists and enjoy a few hours of mental auto-pilot, and that's more than enough for most moviegoers. But making a big, ridiculous, profitable tentpole with massive set pieces, and doing so with a cast dominated by POC, is still a remarkable, reassuring feat, and it's more than we usually get.